This play-to-earn game features wolves, sheep, and rules that make it possible that you’ll lose your yield.

WOLF GAME‘s original whitepaper set the stage for a game that combined psychology, NFTs, and tokens. The OG wolf game is a risk protocol for NFTs that involves plenty of interaction between the ERC-20 and ERC-271 protocols. Rare NFTs confer the ability for someone to steal other NFTs and accumulate more tokens. While there was originally no roadmap for the project, its popularity led to further development and a second whitepaper.

The most fascinating aspect of the game was how players’ actions with sheep NFTs would impact the value of the rarer Wolf NFTs.

Let’s dive into probability and a world of wolves, sheep, and farmers without further ado.

 

Game Mechanics and Future

On a quaint farm in the metaverse, a flock of Sheep congregate and produce a healthy supply of $WOOL. They huddle together in a Barn and are sheared regularly by their owners to farm the $WOOL. With more $WOOL, the farmers can purchase more Sheep! But outside lurk dangers the Sheep are terrified of… The Wolves.

The Wolves are on the hunt for Sheep and their precious $WOOL. They’ll take it by any means necessary. They’ll kidnap Sheep or catch them unaware and steal all of their $WOOL. So the farmers struck a deal with the Wolves: they pay the Wolves a tax on all $WOOL production. In return, the Wolves don’t attack Sheep who are safe in the Barn.

But when a Sheep leaves the farm or new Sheep are born… the Wolves don’t hold back.

The original project involved 10,000 Gen 0 mints which cost 0.069420 each. You can guess why those particular numbers were chosen. Each mint had a 10% chance of generating a wolf and a 90% chance of generating a sheep.

Original $WOOL Tokenomics

Afterward, there is the potential to create 40,000 Gen 1 NFTs by farming another token called $WOOL. Each sheep has unique traits and allows you to engage with the risk protocol. There are a few actions that each of these sheep can undertake:

  • Enter the barn to stake: This allows the sheep to accumulate 10,000 $WOOL per day with no risk.
  • Shear $WOOL to claim: This allows you to claim 80% of the wool that you managed to generate. The wolves receive a guaranteed 20% tax on all the wool for not attacking the barn. This taxed amount is split among all the wolves staking out by the barn, proportional to the traits of the wolves.
  • Leave barn and unstake: The sheep leaves the barn and has all the $WOOL shorn. This is only allowed if the sheep has 2 days’ worth of $WOOL accumulated from staking. This gives you a 50% chance of receiving all the $WOOL without paying any tax. But there’s a 50% chance that all the $WOOL is stolen by the wolves that are staked at the barn.

In addition, there is a cap of the total supply of $WOOL at 5,000,000,000. Once 2,400,000,000 has been earned through staking, no more $WOOL can be created. The developers will receive 600,000,000 $WOOL, and the rest will be given to the community. The $WOOL also allows users to mint more sheep with a 10% chance that the new NFT is a wolf. However, there is a 10% chance that the new sheep or wolf is stolen by a currently staked wolf.

Wolf NFTs

Recall that 10% of the initially minted NFTs became wolves. Each wolf has their unique trait as well as an Alpha value that ranges between 5 to 8. The higher this value, the higher the proportion of $WOOL that is received from sheep paying their taxes and the higher the chance that the wolf will steal a newly minted Gen 1 wolf/sheep. Wolves can be staked, claim their $WOOL and become unstaked with no risk at all.

 

Risk, Reward and Game Theory

The brilliant aspect of the game is that the value of the wolves is entirely dependent on the actions of the sheep. If none of the sheep claim their $WOOL and accumulate, the wolves don’t earn anything from taxes. But of course, players wanted to take the risk of unstaking. This game mechanism incentivized the value of wolves.

Unique On-Chain Mechanisms

The project uses constant time algorithms to track daily $WOOL earnings while remaining completely on the chain. The pixel art for each Wolf and Sheep is also stored on the Ethereum blockchain thanks to efficient data packing and coding.

The whitepaper ends of on a meta-commentary about the space:

“Wolves preying on Sheep feels almost like a parallel to the NFT community itself: A select few with alpha among all of us, and many others following the pack.”

Further Development

Due to a vulnerability in the original contract, the game migrated onto another, more secure contract. Some users figured out how to ensure that they would mint wolves, and later how to accumulate significantly more $WOOL. Since then, the smart contract was paused to prevent further gaming of the system.

Later, the developer decided to cap the Gen 1 Wolves and Sheep to 3,809. This also allowed for the creation of “Wool Pouch” NFTs distributed to all the players. Since there would be no more sheep minted in Gen 1, the rest of the $WOOL was divided into these pouches.

The first 10,000 $WOOL are immediately available and allow players to generate a Farmer, while the rest would unlock at gradual rate over four years. Players have the choice to claim the $WOOL that gets unlocked or trade the pouch and the $WOOL inside at any time. But after migration, the wolves and sheep engaged in the Risky Game.

Risky Game

Sheep have the option to avoid the risk altogether. In this scenario, they get all the $WOOL that they staked prior to the contract migration or $WOOL they accumulated as a bonus while the smart contract was paused. All it costs the Sheep holder is a 20% tax paid to the Wolves.

But if you risk the Wool Pouch, there is a 50% chance you walk away with more $WOOL than you would have otherwise received. But that means you can also end up losing all the $WOOL you’ve accumulated.

Farmers and Land

New assets were introduced in the game featuring land with different resources and capabilities and farmers used to tend to the land. The full game is said to be released at some point in 2022.

 

Wolf Game Takeaways

At peak popularity, many of the Wolves and Sheep sold for up to $85,000.

However, the market has since cooled, and you are able to snag sheep, wolves, and pouches for less than 1 ETH. It is unclear how long the market will survive or if the game will return. However, it does showcase what’s possible with creativity, smart contracts, and game theory. If it can sustain momentum, now might be a good time to pick up some of the NFTs for cheaper.

It is unclear whether this game was a one-off that gained popularity and fizzled out. A few hucksters took advantage and recreated the game on other blockchains like BSC. Some people may be taking advantage of the uncertainty to draw in more users into their version of the game. Imitation is the kindest form of flattery!

Many developers are now looking to combine play-to-earn and DeFi mechanics in the spirit of Wolf Game. But for now, the future of the game is unclear.

Were they all sheep for buying into a game that will never materialize, or will it come back stronger next year?